Saturday, March 5, 2011

Happy Birthday Mr. Eisner

Hopefully I'm not too late for this one, since I only just found out that today (I'll keep that term vague so as not to incriminate myself) is Will Eisner's birthday. Eisner certainly elevated the comic book medium and he produced some truly wonderful art. His most famous creation is probably The Spirit. The Spirit is a noir detective in a domino mask (Eisner's boss wanted a costume, and Eisner was sick of costumes, so he gave him a mask). Put in suspended animation by Dr Cobra, he was buried but managed to escape his internment. He decides to abandon his old identity and, with the blessings of Police Commissioner Dolan, an old friend, becomes a vigilante.

The Spirit holes up in a secret hideout underneath his own grave. Over the course of his adventures he tangles with femme fatales, a mad scientist or two and The Octopus, his arch-enemy and a master of disguise. His primary sidekick is one Ebony White, an unfortunate racist caricature in appearance and speech, who otherwise proves to be well loved by his allies and a true friend and helper to the Spirit.

As a Mystery Men! character, the Spirit is a good example of a non-powered adventurer, thus the low starting XP. Despite not technically having any powers, he certainly manages to survive some rough scrapes and shows some keen detective skills, thus the heroic attributes.


4 comments:

  1. Thanks for keeping his Spirit alive.
    Happy Birthday, Will.

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  2. A nice little tribute to Mr. Eisner.

    I have a question about the Mystery Men! stat blocks you've been making lately (I think that MM! is pretty swell). You have a line in several for the write-ups for Flaws. I was wondering how those work in the game.

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  3. I'm getting ready to write some guidelines on flaws. Essentially, I want to keep flaws very free form - something devised by the Ref and the player. So, no hard and fast rules, but essentially getting a discount on a power by introducing a substantial flaw (i.e. "my power doesn't work on left-handed albinos named Mark" does not count, but "my power doesn't work on the color yellow" does). Hopefully, in the next couple weeks I'll have the final "Omega" rules out - they'll be the last release before the final rules + setting + art is released.

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  4. Will was a teacher at the college I went to and while I never had him 'officially' I used to sneak in during free periods. He knew and let me and I wasn't the only one.

    Great man, great talent, great character.

    ReplyDelete

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